What's Cookin?
by Light Seeker 001
Summary: When a pair of idiots start a restaurant, thinking they're about to make it big, they find out they're wrong. The restaurant is a failure. That is until a drifter comes along to turn things around. But when business is booming, the two men find themselves falling victim to greed...


This story begins on a highway, where a roadside restaurant has been set up. The name of the restaurant is unimportant and neither where it is located, but what IS important is that the joint is a flop. And the previous owner probably knew that before selling it to two idiots who thought they could make it big. Well, judging by the empty tables and very few money they were making, they were wrong. It doesn't take a genius to figure out these two have absolutely no experience in the restaurant business.

The shabbily-dressed man plods up to the roadside eating place, pushes open the rickety screen door, lets it slam resoundingly behind him and looks around! His gaze shifts...from the empty tables and chairs to the sawdust-covered floor...to the counter with its empty stools...to the glaring faces of the foot-stand's two proprietors... "Not very busy, are you?"

"Go on, scram!" says the fat one grumpily.

"No handouts!" says the skinny one.

The one with the tattered clothes shakes his head and smiles at the two behind the counter... "You are wrong, gentlemen! iI/i am not the one who is looking for a handout! iYou are!/i This place is a failure, isn't it?"

"None of your business," the fat one shouts.

"You want something to eat or don't you?" the skinny one asks impatiently.

"Not right now! First, let me finish!" says the drifter. "In the three weeks since you bought this...this..." He gestured at the vacant eatery. "This so-called road-side restaurant from its last owner, you two have had a total of sixty-two customers! Hardly enough to keep you in business! In fact, I would say two more months of that kind of business...an average of three meals a day...will bust you!"

The two men can't believe what they were hearing. "You mean you've been out there icountin'/i our customers for three weeks?" the fat one asks.

"Exactly! I ialso/i counted the numbers that passed on the highway in the same period! Do you want to know how many? Twenty-two THOUSAND! Over nine-hundred a DAY! About two cars each minute!"

"Wow! That many?"

"Yes! If you could stop, say, one out of ten cars, you'd serve one hundred meals a day or more! Think what that would mean!"

"A hundred! Boy! That'd be something!"

"Yeah, smart guy!" the skinny one says sarcastically. "How you gonna stop 'im?" He obviously doesn't believe this guy's plans.

"That...gentlemen..." the hobo pauses with a businessman's smirk. "...is my secret! And my offer is very simple! I'll work for nothing until this place shows a profit!"

"For nuthin'?!" the skinny one asks.

"Well...for my meals! I'll sleep in the back! But...after I shape this place, install my own methods and ideas, and the business begins to show a profit instead of a loss...then I get fifty percent! Half the profits...those're my terms!"

The huge fat one looks at the small skinny one! They've sunk their lives' savings into this place! Their situation is DESPERATE! They've lost steadily! Their bank account is almost gone! Any offer...iany/i way to show a profit...sounds good to them...

"What do you say, Herman?" the skinny one asks.

"Half of a profit is better than no profit at all, Charlie!" the fat one responds. "Let's give 'im a chance!"

"Then it's a deal?" the drifter asks.

"Okay, stranger...it's a deal" the fat one says, shaking their new partner's hand. "You make this place pay and you can have half the profits!"

"Good! Then we might as well get acquainted! My name's Eric Edwards!"

A thick-lipped grin spreads over the fat one's face... "I'm Herman Ditter! This is Charlie Marsin!" He gestures to the skinny one.

"Glad to know you, Hermin and Charlie! Now here's my plan!" Eric begins to explain his plan. "This place is like every other roadside eatery on the highway! We've got to ispecialize/i! You've heard the expression, 'Jack of all Trades, Master of None'? Well, we're going to specialize in one dish! Listen! Hear that?"

From far off, a rooster crows...it's rasping cry echoing through the balmy California air...

"All I hear is the chickens on that farm on the road!" says Herman.

"And they're probably very cheap!" says Eric. "We're going to specialize in chicken! Nothing but chicken!"

The next day and the days that follow are filled with the sounds of sawing and hammering, as Eric (now given a clean shave and a cleaner set of clothes) begins to change the appearance of the little restaurant.

"What's he doin' up there, Herman?"

"Looks like Eric's makin' the roof over, Charlie!"

Slowly, the silhouette of a huge chicken begins to take shape and is placed on the roof! Large brilliantly colored letters are painted on it...

"'The Chicken Coop!'" Herman reads the words on the chicken sign. "Hey! That's pretty snazzy, Eric!"

"THIS ought to attract attention, eh, boys?"

Then the clinking and chinking of bricks resound over the busy highway...

"He must be nuts!" exclaims Herman. "He's puttin' up a chimney right in front of the place!"

"What in blazes is that, Eric?" asks Charlie.

"It's going to be a giant barbecue, Charlie!" Eric says, patting the brickwork. "We're going to cook the chickens right out in front so everyone can see from the road!"

Soon, a tiny curl of smoke rises from the barbecue! The succulent, mouth-watering odor of broiling chickens wafts toward the the busy highway... And so, highway travelers begin to stop at the Chicken Coop! They crowd the tables that have been moved outside, watching their orders turn on the pit before the red hot coals... The Chicken Coop begins to thrive as more and more customers jam the novel establishment...

"You certainly have done wonders, Eric!" says Herman one night.

"We'll have to buy some more tables to accommodate the flood of customers!"

An adjacent tract of land bordering the highway is leased and cleared...

"This will make more room for the cars and the deep-fat-fryer!" explains Eric.

"Deep-fat-fryer?" asks Herman. "What's that?"

"Southern-style fried chicken! It will be a good addition to the barbecued fowl!"

"You sure are a shrewd businessman, Eric!"

A large cauldron is brought in and southern-style, deep-fat-fried chicken is added to the menu! The fame of the Chicken Coop begins to spread, one couple even traveled for thirty miles just to try out the chicken... The success of the Chicken Coop, with its outdoor barbecue and deep-fat-fryer, is unbelievable! In one year, the tiny food-stand grows to a huge roadside emporium with a hundred parking lot and seats for two hundred and fifty people... "Charlie! Herman! I think it's time to build a new Chicken Coop!" says Eric one night. "I have visions of something big! Something stupendous! We'll build a gigantic barbecue capable of broiling fifty chickens at one time!"

"Whatever you say, Eric!" says the two men.

"Construction on the New Chicken Coop is begun! A beautiful modernistic restaurant rises beside its predecessor! The barbecue is tremendous...

"Each one of these four spits is twelve feet long!" Eric exclaims as he presents the new additions to the two men. "We'll catch the fat drippings from the broiling chickens in that catch-pan there, and use the stuff in the deep-fat-fryer!"

"Say, there's an economical idea there!" Charlie says.

The new deep-fat-fryer is a huge cauldron over six feet in diameter and two feet deep!

"We can deep-fat-fry fifty chickens at one time in this thing!" Eric says, presenting the giant fryer to his two partners.

"We certainly have come a long way, huh, Charlie?" Herman asks.

When the New Chicken Coop is opened to the public, it is an immediate success! Even with its huge capacity, people have to wait in line for tables. And with such a huge restaurant, they had to hire more employees. They were almost flooded with resumes from the applicants wanting to work at the newest most popular roadside attraction in the United States...

Fortune smiles upon the three restauranteurs! The profits pour in! And with the mounting profits comes mounting greed...

"Look at these books, Herman!" Charlie says one night as the two of them went over the numbers. "We netted two thousand dollars last week!"

"That means five hundred apiece for you and me..." Herman slowly begins to realize. "...and one thousand for Eric!"

"Quite a large chunk for him, eh, Herman? If he wasn't around, we could split it fifty-fifty! Not five hundred, but one grand for each of us!"

"Aw, but what can we do? We have that agreement we made back when we were nuthin'!"

A wicked grin slowly begins to spread on Charlie's face. "If Eric were to die, we could forget the agreement."

"Aw, he's as healthy as a..."

"Don't be as thick as you look, you fat idiot! I'm not talking about a natural death!"

Herman gasps in horror. "You...you mean murder?"

"Yes! He's got no family! He came to us penniless and alone! So he put us up on top! So what? He's got the lion's share! I say let's take it all for ourselves!"

Herman slowly starts to come 'round to his partner's plan. "What's the plan, Charlie?"

"Simple! Eric bought himself that little ranch house off the main highway. Now, suppose...while he slept, it caught fire and he burnt to death!"

That night, Eric is awakened by a sound in his room! He sits up, staring in the darkness... "Who's there?" he calls out.

"It's me, Eric! It's Herman! Don't be frightened!"

Before Eric could ask what he's doing here, he is suddenly attacked! Despite his lumbering hulk, Herman is upon Eric in a flash! Charlie moves out of the shadows with a coil of rope...

"Stick the gag in his mouth!"

The fat one and the skinny one work swiftly! Soon Eric is securely tied to the bed and the room is in flames after they poured gasoline and lit a match...

"So long, Eric!" says Herman, waving. "Thanks for all the help!"

"From now on, we work alone!" laughs Charlie. "Just me and Herman, fifty-fifty!"

As the two men watch from a vantage point down Eric's private road, hot searing tongues of fire leap upward from the windows! Soon, Eric's nice new place is a roaring inferno...

"C'mon Herman, let's go go back to the Chicken Coop and make new plans!"

"Boy! That's some inferno!"

But as the fat one and the thin one disappear into the night, a blackened and charred figure slowly crawls painfully from the flaming house, howling like a dog that's been struck by a car. The odor of burning flesh fills the night as the scorched figure drags itself along, its blood-curdling screams echoing into the darkness. In their office in the New Chicken Coop, Herman and Charlie drink a toast to their future! But suddenly, their grins freeze on their faces as the door is flung open...

In the morning, the police, investigating the burning of Eric's nice new house, stop by the New Chicken Coop to inquire...

"Look at this, on the floor! It's the blackened and burned corpse of a man!" one officer says.

"That's Eric Edward's body!" the second officer exclaims. "He must have been caught in the fire in his house! But how in the world did he manage to drag himself all the way over here in that condition?!"

Then one policeman's gaze falls upon the giant barbecue...

"GOOD LORD!"

Herman Ditter's sizzling body hangs from the topmost spit before the now glowing embers! The fat, rendered from his once obese body, bubbles and gurgles in the immense cauldron! Bobbing in the boiling grease is the browned, seared remains of Charlie Marsin...

"This guy's been broiled alive!" the first officer gags.

"And this one's been southern fried!" the second officer chokes.

So, how would you like your tasty revenge? Barbecued or southern-fried?


End file.
